The MAHI Project: Menstrual Awareness and Hygiene in India

I was born in Austin, Texas, but my parents are first-generation immigrants from India. A few summers after I had gotten my first period, my family and I made one of our many trips to see family in India. I had brought my own sanitary napkins, but I struggled to maintain my own menstrual hygiene while in India because of the lack of clean toilets. I wondered what Indian women did while on their periods, especially if they were in even more rural areas. I became so curious, I turned to my mom, and finally to my grandma, who told me she used to use a rag or cloth when she was on her period. At that time, I couldn’t understand how you could keep using one rag while on your period, because in America we don’t have to think twice about it. As I did more research, I learned from UNICEF that 28% of the students in India do not go to school during their period, due to lack of facilities and materials. They’re forced to hide due to cultural taboos, which means they can’t often dry their cloths properly and they can pick up dust which can lead to infections that can greatly alter their lives. I knew we had to do something.

With the help of my family at the age of 16, I took action through the platform of the Girl Scout Gold Award. Girl Scouts’ highest award, the Gold Award, is given to an older scout who has spent at least 80 hours creating a sustainable and global-minded project that addresses a certain issue. After discovering a TED talk about an Indian engineer who created a simple machine for producing low-cost sanitary pads, I knew I found a sustainable solution. The machine takes cotton fiber and grinds it up, and the women then press it into simple rectangular molds. They wrap it twice in a cotton covering and then sanitize it in a small UV machine. The women sell these at an appropriate rate cheaper than the market price and use the profit to compensate for their time and purchase the next year’s materials. ​

I raised over $4,500, or 292,000 Rupees by reaching out to friends, family, and local businesses in the Indian community in Austin and found incredible support. We bought the machine and had it transported to Dityakhedi, Rajasthan, near where my father grew up. My family then went to India to help set up the machine and hold educational discussions with the young women of the villages about puberty, menstruation, and menstrual hygiene, which was all nonexistent in their school curriculum. The education piece was my favorite part. We used the Hindi Menstrupedia video resources and Hindi brochures we made from scratch. After we brought the information to the girls, we then opened the conversation and discussed these topics. They asked so many questions and really seemed receptive to the information. In our first trip, we visited 4 different villages and discussed with about 150 girls. After those discussions, we knew we had to continue. That’s how The MAHI (Menstrual Awareness and Hygiene in India) Project came to be. Because of this, I was chosen as one of the top ten outstanding Gold Award projects in the country, earning the National Young Woman of Distinction Award and Scholarship, which opened even more doors for me.  ​​

After a year, however, I had gotten a bit older and wiser, and I learned that my initial approach had many flaws. The machine was not being used to its full capacity in Rajasthan, and I did not want it to fall into disuse. I realized that this wasn’t a failure, but rather a learning opportunity and a first step in a very long journey where we’re constantly trying to improve. We made the decision to move the machine to Kerala, in South India, where we worked with low-income school to partner with a group of unemployed women and create an ongoing initiative using the machine. This past March, my family visited one more time to take the educational piece to 5 different schools in the rural parts of Lucknow. There, we asked the girls if they talked to their moms or sisters about their periods or if they knew why periods happened, the girls shook their heads “no.” I knew that the even the educational piece was making a huge impact on the girls. ​

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Since then, my sister and I have registered as a non-profit and raised money to build a bathroom for the women near the location where machine is housed. We check back often and are currently working on ways to build a better model with the environment, culture, and girls in mind. I’m honored to have been recognized for this work, and I’m so glad that this movement is gaining so much traction around the world, because it has been overlooked for far too long. Though The MAHI Project is not a UT student organization, if you would like to get involved with helping us, please reach out at themahiproject@gmail.com or to The MAHI Project Facebook page. We are currently working on research, spreading the word through outreach, and fundraising in order to plan our next project, and we would appreciate help from any students that are passionate about menstrual hygiene in the developing world. ​

Devika Kumar is currently a sophomore majoring in International Relations and Global Studies, and Plan II Honors. Devika is a first-generation Indian-American and thus has a strong connection to the South Asian region. This background inspired her to create The MAHI Project (Menstrual Awareness and Hygiene in India), for which she was selected, as one of ten, to receive the National Young Women of Distinction Award. Through her long-standing study of the Spanish language and culture, she also has a special interest in Latin America and its development. Devika is also pursuing coursework in Economics with hopes to further study economic gender equality in developing nations.

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